10 Common Web Design Mistakes

Web design is no more of just ornamental and aesthetic value but it is central to your success on the web. In relation to our discussion on top 10 common web design mistakes we must understand the effectiveness of good design attributes and on the opposite side the mistakes that make a website unfriendly to user and correspondingly subverted by web traffic.

10 Common Web Design Mistakes

Designing a website is the most crucial part of your gaining a solid foot online that would translate into great array of business deliverables and outcomes. Web design is no more of just ornamental and aesthetic value but it is central to your success on the web. In relation to our discussion on top 10 common web design mistakes we must understand the effectiveness of good design attributes and on the opposite side the mistakes that make a website unfriendly to user and correspondingly subverted by web traffic. At a time when web is increasingly going mobile, websites cannot afford to be in the same mould as they have been in earlier time. Some of the most common web design mistakes are particularly seen in small business websites, though even in so called web biggies also a great array of mistakes are observed that can be breached up to augment web performance. As web presence is increasingly going to be the prime avenue of business for many enterprises in the globalised business scenario these mistakes are equally important to influence business outcomes.

Not being search engine specific

Definitely when you are expecting good website traffic volume and are geared towards definite business outcomes through the web, you must eye for a better search engine ranks or at least maintaining a competitive edge in comparison to others in the same field who are doing good in respect of making good search engine presence and corresponding traffic. While short keywords are increasingly becoming difficult to give a website to rank higher, long keywords should be more targeted. Secondly, you just cannot afford to do silly mistakes like putting hyphens, colons, commas and other punctuation marks within the tag as they make negative impact on search impact.

No clear calls to action

One of the ghastly, unpardonable web design mistakes done by many websites is that they just suddenly forget to incorporate those attributes that are required to follow the user behavior on the web and accordingly address him. As soon as the visitor lands on your webpage you need to have clear cut plan of action to retain the traffic and augment his or her web experience and that is the only chance of yours to become popular and gain more traffic. Your website is good at describing the products and services and almost creating a sensation in presenting your business deliverables in most attractive manner possible but until and unless you direct the user to a definitive action, there is no point of doing all these, after all your website is not a charitable place for aesthetic pleasure to satisfy.

Bad navigation

For a designer bad navigation or web attributes that make the user experience deplorable enough is not just a mistake but should be considered a sin, because using all resources if you just cannot deliver a user friendly navigation that helps the user move between pages then you cannot think of offering your web content for the users. The user should get access to any of your articles, media contents and related web pages just using the easy navigation links from the landing page. Moreover even if any of your content really seems missing, a clear search button and additional advance and specific search option can really be handy to let him gain access to the desired web page. Bad navigation and absence of simple commands like 'search', is one of the most common web design mistakes that directly affects traffic flow.

Being slow in page upload

There are millions of websites those suffer simply because of upload speed and as even most of the search engines including Google decided to punish sites with bad upload speed, there is no escaping if you do not mend this mistake properly. If your web page takes hell lot of time to upload you just cannot expect your desired traffic to wait as in most cases visitors tend to wait just couple of seconds before going elsewhere. Making the landing page heavy without optimizing the content for the page speed can really be problematic for achieving speed. Particularly images and media files take longer time to upload and if you have not optimized them for gaining a better upload speed you are at worse than without having them.

Looking like a confusing zombie

There are so many websites that in pursuit of looking too much fashionable end up being a self conscious zombie with gushing colors and glitz. Users in present day are very particular about the objective and purpose and they just do not hang around in appreciation for these funny things of looks and glitz and moreover, when this clutter of too many colors and glitz confuses them they just move on to another website that quickly addresses their concern and question. More flat, simple, clear, content specific look of your website is just going to create an opposite effect and benefit you in respect of traffic and retention of traffic and corresponding business outcomes.

Opening new browser window

One of the funny web design mistakes that make millions of web users feel irrevocably annoyed about these websites is the unsolicited opening of a new browser window all of a sudden. It is more like the courier boy using your toilet without seeking any permission while visiting your home. Web users detest being guided to a different window instead of searching multiple tabs within the same window and if you do not keep this thing in mind there is reason enough that they will desert your page as soon as a new window appears. Moreover, a new browser window contributes to making the web speed slow and it actually makes the user compromise in that regard unwillingly.

Poor readability of content

'Content is King':- it is no longer just a wise proverb anymore; especially after all search engines are becoming stricter in respect of elevating the web experience. So if content is not being presented in a prominent way, if the readability of the content make user experience suffers, it will directly affect your web performance. Users come for informative value adding contents and if it is not served properly corresponding to their query, your purpose and efficacy as a website is in question. Sometimes content is obscure enough to meet the suitability of eyesight of everyone and sometimes they are presented in very stark contrast that make viewing painful and both are wrong as far as presenting content is concerned. Presenting content in mild contrast yet in a readable manner is most important.

Complicated and long drawn registration process

One of the most common web design mistakes which is observed across millions of websites of different contents and subjects is the really boring, complicated and long drawn process of registration that makes chunk of web users simply leave the site's page and go elsewhere. A registration process should not last more than a few seconds as no web user in today's time is ready to give the test of patience for the query or concern they have visited the site with. Moreover if the registration process asks too much personal questions the chances are that a great chunk of visitors will simply leave your site in haste. You can make the registration process divided into parts while letting the user gain access to the content as earliest though leaving room for the users to fill the rest of the form later on.

Non-optimized use of images and media files

Images and media files can augment the user's experience and correspondingly your site's performance as well but when they are not treated as per the web platform before presenting them on the web, they can produce detrimental effect to web experience. For instance, your images must be optimized enough to appear smoothly and make an impressive effect while wherever there are video or audio files they should not be detrimental to page upload speed while at the same time creating satisfactory effect for the user's experience.

Automatic music or media loading or unwanted media

Today's web users are very specific to their choices and preferences and do not like anything that just begins to play on their device without their nod of permission. So if your website just automatically begins to play any audio or any other media files as soon as the page uploads, it can actually be a reason for a great majority of users to detest your website and go elsewhere. Automatic media loading is one of the common web design mistakes that make users uncomfortable and feel approached by unwanted promotions.

Honorable Mention: Not differentiating link appearance

Web space is the network of links and if your web page is not particularly specific about links, it can affect your traffic behavior and traffic volume to detrimental level. Most important of all you must facilitate differentiate all links in the page with different colors and even should differentiate already visited links from other links. Differentiating links and differentiating visited and links in general make the browsing experience extremely enriching and least hackling and just on the opposite effect can even drive users into nuts.